CW: Murder and suicide, but to be fair, you're trying to stop these things.

Call me the Mastermind, and I’ve been plotting. Don’t concern yourself with the reasons for my schemes, but let it be known that everybody here is just another of my pawns. I manipulate them to my needs, make them paranoid, break their wills, and bring them to do things they may otherwise not. Without touching anything myself, I can bring about a Tragedy.

Which brings us to you. Protagonists, of sorts. On your own you may not be able to do much. Sure, you can make friends, convince people to act in certain ways, and investigate a bit, but even all together you couldn’t possibly discover what my plan is, never mind stop it.
But maybe one of you discovers a journal that seems to literally transport you to days written of.
An old watch that has a peculiar effect when wound back.
An app on your phone that you don’t think its features are officially supported.
Somehow, you can turn back time to the start of my plans. So perhaps you truly are a threat. But I’m still watching, and I’ll fight to the end to ensure no matter how many times you Loop, Tragedy will still occur.

yo sup this is tragedy looper it’s a 1v3 mystery solving game of sorts where three Protagonists take on one Mastermind. The Protagonists get to each take a single action each day, whereas the Mastermind gets three. The Protagonists try to draw information out to figure out what sort of bad shit is going on and how to avoid it, while the Mastermind tries to obfuscate this information as much as possible. Making this more complicated for the Mastermind is that the Protagonists get to travel back in time a few times when they fail. Making it more complicated for the Protagonists is they can’t actually talk strategy unless they’re in between Loops.

The Protagonists win if they either know exactly what’s going on, or manage to avoid Tragedy.
The Mastermind wins if they ensure the Tragedy always occurs, and has kept the workings of his plan secret.

In a game of Tragedy Looper, the Protagonists are pitted against the Mastermind, who knows what’s going on. One game has many Characters each with a specific Role, many of whom may trigger Incidents. Certain conditions being fulfilled will cause the Protagonists to lose, or just straight up get killed themselves. But it’s fine! You can time travel. even if you die it’s fine. The Protagonists win if they manage to avoid any loss conditions even a single time. But you only have so many Loops to attempt this, and if you run through them all without winning, the Mastermind wins instead. Not that it’s over. If you can name every single Role of every single Character, you win anyways.

Every game has a Script. A Script says: the Plots, the Characters, and the Incidents. The Script is secret, but the players are privy to knowing what Incidents are going to occur, the number of days in a single Loop, and how many Loops they get. The players also get to know every possible Plot that could occur.
Each script has a Main Plot and at least one Sub Plot. Each plot has a set number of roles, and no other roles will be involved in a Script other than those relevant to the active Plots. Likewise, no roles will be absent from either of the active plots. Anybody that doesn't end up with a role is just called a Person. Finding out what roles exist within a given game is the key to determining what the Plot is.

Each loop starts in a Time Spiral. The Time Spiral is the only time the Protagonists can talk to one another.. They should use this time to come up with an idea as to what they should do, and how they should act, but the Mastermind is always listening. So, y’know. Be careful of that. There’s no specific time limit here but like if it seems like it’s dragging/slowing down I might put a time limit on finishing up. You can also choose to forgo the remaining loops if desired.

Once the Loop starts you move one day at a time until the Protagonists lose or you run out of days. Days go as follows.

DAY START - Some abilities occur at daystart. Don’t worry about it.

MASTERMIND PLAYS CARDS - The Mastermind will take three actions, secretly. The actions may be on Characters or directly on Locations. They do not yet take effect.
The Mastermind’s cards/actions are within this spoiler

SpoilerShow

Paranoia +1 - Adds one Paranoia to a character. Does nothing if played on a location. There’s two of these. Paranoia is used to trigger Incidents.Paranoia -1 - Removes one Paranoia from a character. Does nothing if played on a location.Forbid Paranoia - If played with a Paranoia +1 or -1, cancels that out.Forbid Goodwill - If played with a Goodwill +1 or +2, cancels that out.Intrigue +1 - Adds one Intrigue to a character or location. Intrigue is used to trigger Mastermind Abilities.Intrigue +2 - Once Per Loop - Adds two Intrigue to a character or location.Movement - Vertical - Moves a character vertically. If played with a horizontal card, moves diagonal. If played with a diagonal, flips it to the horizontal. If played with another vertical, movement does not change direction.Movement - Horizontal - Moves a character horizontally. If played with a vertical card, moves diagonal. If played with a diagonal, flips it to the vertical. If played with another horizontal, movement does not change direction.Movement - Diagonal - Once Per Loop - Moves a character diagonally. If played with a vertical/horizontal, moves the opposite direction of the paired card.

PROTAGONISTS PLAY CARDS - Starting with the Leader and moving down the list, each Protagonist takes one action secretly, even to their teammates. They can not play an action on a character/location that another Protagonist has already done so, but they can do so somewhere the Mastermind has played an action.
The Protagonist’s cards/actions are within this spoiler. (Once Per Loop cards being played does not remove it from the hands of other protagonists)

SpoilerShow

Paranoia +1 - Adds one Paranoia to a character. Does nothing if played on a location. There’s two of these. Paranoia is used to trigger Incidents.Paranoia -1 - Once Per Loop - Removes one Paranoia from a character. Does nothing if played on a location.Goodwill +1 - Adds one Goodwill to a character or location. Goodwill is used to trigger Goodwill Abilities.Goodwill +2 - Once Per Loop - Adds two Goodwill to a character or location.Forbid Intrigue - If played on the same spot as an Intrigue +1 or +2, cancels the Intrigue. However, if two Protagonists play this card on the same day, no matter where, they cancel each other out and any Intrigue still goes through.Movement - Vertical - Moves a character vertically. If played with a horizontal card, moves diagonal. If played with a diagonal, flips it to the horizontal. If played with another vertical, movement does not change direction.Movement - Horizontal - Moves a character horizontally. If played with a vertical card, moves diagonal. If played with a diagonal, flips it to the vertical. If played with another horizontal, movement does not change direction.Forbid Movement - Once Per Loop If played with a Movement card, cancels it out and nothing happens.

ACTIONS ARE RESOLVED - All actions are revealed, and take effect effectively at the same time, with the order of operations for conflicts being 1- Forbid Movevement, 2 - Movement, 3 - Other forbids, 4 - All other cards
Actions that are not marked as ‘once per loop’ are returned to the ‘hand’ immediately after being resolved, and once per loop actions stay out of the hand until the next Time Spiral.

MASTERMIND ABILITIES - The Mastermind may have any manner of abilities at his disposal depending on the roles involved in the game. Notably, only the results of these abilities are announced, not what actually happened or which character caused it.

GOODWILL ABILITIES - The current Leader gets sole control over use of Goodwill abilities. Characters with enough Goodwill on them can have their abilities used every day, unless they have the Once Per Loop symbol on them. The Leader can choose whether or not to use available abilities.

INCIDENTS - If the prerequisites are fulfilled, an Incident will occur. The culprit must be alive and they must have hit their Paranoia limit in order to commit the Incident. The Mastermind announces if the Incident occurs or not, and if it does, then what the result is. Just like abilities, you don’t learn the culprit or what happens, just what comes of it.

SWITCH LEADER - Leadership gets passed down the line each day.

DAY END - See day beginning, but do a find and replace thing.

After this, either go back to step one, or if the game was lost at some point in this process, head back to the Time Spiral, unless you’re out of loops. If you got to the end of the final day without losing, congrats, you won!

If you’re in the Time Spiral again, everything gets reset back to the start of day 1, but one loop further, including getting all your Once Per Loop cards back.

If you’re out of loops, or you’ve just decided to forgo your remaining loops in the Time Spiral, then you’ve got one more chance to win! In the Final Guess you have to collectively go through every single Character and name their Role. If you have a 100% accuracy rate on your guesses, you have completely solved the Mastermind’s plot and win! If not, you ain’t know shit and you lose for real.

And that’s it, I think. pls consult the rulebook for anything i explained poorly tia, or tell me on discord if you notice something i should fix/explain better
Here’s what the various symbols/tokens look like.

SpoilerShow

Goodwill - How friendly characters are towards you. The more goodwill a character has towards you, the more they’re willing to do to help you. Most characters have Goodwill abilities listed at the bottom of their card. When an equal or greater number of Goodwill tokens are placed upon a character, their abilities may be used during the sixth phase of the day.

Paranoia - How afraid characters are. Fear drives people to do terrible things. Paranoia triggers Incidents. Every character has a different Paranoia Limit, and if they have Paranoia tokens on them equal or greater than their limit, they are liable to be responsible for an Incident, if the Script says they should be.

Intrigue - A representation of the Mastermind’s influence. Where there’s Intrigue, there’s trouble. Intrigue can be placed on both characters and locations, and is used to trigger Mastermind Abilities. These abilities can involve doing anything from adding Paranoia to characters to just straight up causing the Protagonists to lose.

Once Per Loop - not actually a token so much if you see this symbol on something it means you only get to use it once per loop. Abilities and actions that have this symbol can be used again the next time you visit the Time Spiral.

So, first thing’s first, please don’t volunteer to play if you’ve looked at the scripts. Since, like, that’s the whole point of this thing. I’ll be trying to go through all ten Scripts, and we can certainly switch up players between games.

But for now I need three Protagonists to take me on for our First Steps.

Alright cool!
a52 as
wiltingMytosis as
Schazer as
One of you should choose to start as the Leader, don't worry too hard about who it is, it'll get passed around a bunch, and when you feel like you're ready to start, everybody say so and I'll play some actions down.

if there are questions about what exactly one's supposed to be doing, what strategy might be, I'll probably give advice. We haven't even really started yet so learning should happen.

Loop 1 is pretty much pure information gathering, though. Do things and see what happens.

[11:04 PM] Schazer: Hmm still can't get it to work but in a nutshell: you've chosen a plot and subplot
[11:05 PM] Schazer: And then assigned characters to the roles described in each plot and subplot
[11:05 PM] RobustLaser: Yep.
[11:06 PM] Schazer: The murder and suicide cannot occur unless the characters with the relevant roles hit enough paranoia. There may be other conditions
[11:07 PM] RobustLaser: Yep!
[11:08 PM] RobustLaser: I think I'll make a google sheet of the information on the player guide
[11:08 PM] Schazer: We can use the lose conditions on plots+subplots to elik
[11:08 PM] Schazer: Eliminate which plots are happening in the scenario
[11:09 PM] RobustLaser: Precisely. If you manage to figure out somebody is a Cultist, then you know 100% what the main plot is
[11:09 PM] Schazer: For instance if we use the uh, shrine maiden role to do so we can eliminate certain plots
[11:12 PM] Schazer: And you haven't added the faraway murder incident to the incident list so we can rest assured with two characters in a location, if one dies the other is a set number of roles
[11:14 PM] RobustLaser: Incidents, of course, can only happen on the specified day, because i guess the people i'm manipulating have busy schedules and y'know this one character only has time to kill themself on wednesday
[11:14 PM] Schazer: Wait question: there are three protagonists
[11:15 PM] Schazer: Are the protagonists one of the six characters in the play set or are we separate entities
[11:15 PM] RobustLaser: You are separate entities
[11:16 PM] Schazer: So we cannot be any of the Rols
[11:16 PM] Schazer: *Roles
[11:16 PM] Schazer: But we exist on the game board and can be killed by the d2 murder if the conditions are met
[11:16 PM] RobustLaser: No, you don't exist on the board.
[11:16 PM] Schazer: Oh huh. How can we be killed then
[11:17 PM] RobustLaser: One of the roles is called the Killer
[11:17 PM] RobustLaser: and if the Killer has 4 Intrigue on them they'll kill y'all
[11:17 PM] RobustLaser: there may be other ways but i think that's the only one in the First Steps set
[11:18 PM] Schazer: Oh ok so it's a fancy way of saying "y'all lose"
[11:18 PM] RobustLaser: yeah
[11:18 PM] Schazer: Or rather
[11:18 PM] RobustLaser: but you're still magical time travellers so you won't let getting stabbed stop you, unless you get stabbed on day 3
[11:18 PM] Schazer: In the first steps setup game end caused by our dying would indicate the Killer role is in the game
[11:18 PM] RobustLaser: Yep.
[11:20 PM] RobustLaser: I basically want to make it hard for you to narrow things down.
[11:20 PM] Schazer: Gotcha
[11:21 PM] RobustLaser: because even if I defeat you every day, if you can identify every character's role, I still lose
[11:21 PM] Schazer: But:
[11:21 PM] Schazer: If we go a round without dying or hitting the lose conditions we win
[11:21 PM] RobustLaser: Yep.
[11:21 PM] Schazer: So you are forced to show your hand somewhat
[11:22 PM] RobustLaser: Exactly. Showing as little information as possible would just result
[11:22 PM] RobustLaser: in me losing from not doing anything
[11:25 PM] RobustLaser: The worst thing you can do as protagonists
[11:25 PM] RobustLaser: is let me make you lose in the same way twice

There are six characters on the board. Laser chose a main plot and subplot, looked at the Roles needed for those plots, and assigned the Roles to specific characters. No character can have more than one role; characters without Roles are called Persons.

Laser also scheduled two Incidents (murder and suicide). There has been a Culprit assigned to each Incident; a Culprit can either be a Person or a character with a Role. However the two Incidents can't have the same Culprit. Also, the Incidents will not happen if conditions aren't met (namely, sufficient Paranoia on the Culprits, and a victim on location for the Murder).

I think the best way to proceed for Loop 1 is to try and counteract Laser's attempts to ramp up paranoia+intrigue, and find the Key Person quickly (as their murder/suicide ends the loop prematurely). Increasing goodwill with characters is also important? I guess we should just try the first loop and regroup after it for now once we have a round of gameplay under our belts.

I think that's a sound plan! How will we try to find the key person, though?

I'd suggest putting goodwill on the shrine maiden first provided she's in the shrine, if that's alright? I'd say we should put it on the doctor, but if he has a goodwill refusal thing, that could go bad for us.

Oooh yeah. If Lazer does end up showing his(?) hand though that would be all the better for us!

I just thought the Shrine maiden might've been less risky, since it doesnt offer anything to the mastermind if she does have goodwill refusual. The logic could.. be applied to most characters though i think.